just install XFCE and don't worry about it. as long as the apt repositories are stable, let them play with their GUI and you can go back worry about something more interesting.
When I updated to 11.04 I tried Unity for about 3 hours, got annoyed by certain things hurting my work style (the all-workspaces Alt-Tab mentioned above being one), and logged out and back in via "Classic Ubuntu".
I felt no antipathy towards Ubuntu at this point, and I was impressed they were trying new things. They just weren't for me.
Then 11.10 came out, and immediately my machine starts bugging me to upgrade. Apparently when 11.04 came out Canonical had said that Classic wouldn't be available in 11.10, but I missed this.
The upgrade process doesn't prompt you about that fact at all - it just takes the GNOME configuration that you were using, uninstalls it, and gives you only Unity.
After trying Unity again (<1 hour this time), I went to do the same old "Ubuntu Classic" switch and there was no option. That's when I got cranky. I had to Google to find out how to get back the desktop environment I'd had before I upgraded.
I would have felt good about the Ubuntu upgrade if any of the following had happened:
- Upgrade process had said "Please note the environment you are currently using (Ubuntu Classic) will not be available after you upgrade. You can install the gnome-panel package to re-enable it after you upgrade."
- Upgrade process had seen that I was already using Ubuntu Classic and didn't remove the gnome-panel package as part of the upgrade process, letting me keep the Ubuntu Classic after my system upgraded. How would that have hurt?
- (Best One) Upgrade process would have asked me "Would you like to try the new and improved Unity environment after you upgrade? If you change your mind later on, you can log back in as Ubuntu Classic" (alternatively, it could have said "install gnome-panel package and then log back in as Ubuntu Classic" if they couldn't bear to leave those packages installed.)
I agree that to some extent this is me whining like an indulgent nerd about an OS I got given for free, but it's also bad UX on the part of Ubuntu.
During a standard upgrade, your operating system shouldn't decide that the way you've been using it is wrong, and give you an unexpected and not immediately reversible transition to a different way of using it. That's hubris on the part of Canonical.
I genuinely find this attitude confusing.
I gave a presentation to a user group at a senior center last night on Ubuntu, during which one person made a similar argument. (The only real difference was that he used the word "arrogant" rather than "hubris".)
I don't know your background so I can't speak to it, but this person I spoke with had contributed no code, artwork, translations, etc. to the project. He received a product entirely gratis, which he got value from. But then the product moved forward and changed. He still had what he had been given freely, of course. But he demanded that the people doing this work for free either never make changes to their work, or if they do to continue to maintain the old system as well. This work should also be given to him without charge or without him having to put forth any effort.
And for those of us actually spending our lives building the thing for him to do otherwise was arrogant.
I'm literally speechless when confronted with these sorts of arguments.
I do see your point, I really do. My concern, and the part that I specifically labelled hubris - which in hindsight is a regrettable term - was neither the desire to make changes nor the desire to not maintain old configurations. Those things are understandable. When I tried Unity in 11.04 I was impressed that Canonical were working to advance the state of the art.
The part that irks me is when I try to imagine the assumptions behind the choices for the upgrade behaviour in 11.10. Users are proactively prompted to make that upgrade, and I perceive a disconnect between their expectations of a simple upgrade and the resulting user experience.
In the post above I mentioned some ways in which this could have been made much smoother (simply warning users that their entire desktop environment was about to change, for instance.)
Canonical doesn't have to answer a single thing to me for the operating system they worked hard to give me for free, but I still wonder why they chose that path.
I'll give XFCE a try. I don't want to leave Ubuntu, because I like the packages and I don't have to read a manifesto sized manual to install it or learn another package system.
Perhaps that's not who they're targeting.
That's not a good thing? I haven't used Unity yet, but might try it out just on that comment alone.
I agree, though, that this distinction is not clear enough by reading Xubuntu (or Kubuntu, Edubuntu, etc) websites.
Me, I usually just install a very basic Debian and pile crap on top as I go :)
I switched back to Ubuntu for 11.10, hoping some of the things which pushed me to Mint in the first place had been fixed, but I am again bitterly disappointed. Unfortunately, I value having a pretty interface, I find xfce ugly, and simply installing gnome 2 in 11.10 doesn't "just work".
I also tried Arch, but I found I was spending too much time getting it to work how I wanted, and I eventually gave up on it for the same reason I stopped using Gentoo.
The one thing I never considered was switching to Debian - which might be the best idea yet!
Actually, I do wish I had just stuck with Mint, but I dont have time to go back now, and If I am going to install another distro, then why not Debian...